The Divine Marquise

IN FASHION about Belle Epoque fashion priestess Marchesa Luisa Casati. Luisa Casati, a Milanese aristocrat, was born in 1881 to immense wealth and died penniless in 1957. She was tall and cadaverous, with a little feral face swamped by incandescent eyes… She blackened her eyes with kohl, powdered her skin a fungal white, and dyed her hair to resemble a corona of flames; her mouth was a lurid gash… This alarming mask gave the illusion that she was willfully ravaging a great beauty––which she actually did not possess. Her totem animal was the snake. Her contemporaries couldn't decide if she was a vampire, a bird of paradise, an androgyne, a goddess, an enigma, or a common lunatic. Her clothes were esoteric and memorable––i.e., the suit of armor pierced with hundreds of electric arrows; the iridescent necklace of live snakes; the headdress of peacock tail feathers accessorized with chicken's blood. When she really wanted to outdo herself, she wore nothing…Venetians were regularly treated to Casati strolling through St. Mark's Square perfectly nude beneath a fur coat, accompanied by two cheetahs. The only biography of Casati in English, "Infinite Variety," by Scot D. Ryersson and Michael Orlando Yaccarino, is out of print. She was born Luisa Annan, the daughter of Count Annan, who died when Luisa was a teen-ager. She married the scion of an ancient family, the Marchese Casati Stampa di Soncino, and they had one child, Christina. At 22, Luisa was seduced by Gabriele D'Annunzio, the charismatic warrior, spiritualist, and demagogue who was her greatest love. D'Annunzio was forever on the prowl for an indulgent mistress…Casati became his muse, and he helped her cultivate her horror of the mundane. He also aroused her appetite for excess; describes her extravagent ways––expensive jewels, exotic animals, etc. Claims her signature perversities weren't original; mentions Princess di Belgiojoso, who pioneered macabre makeup and hair, and Rachilde, who adopted two sewer rats. The writer encountered Casati while she was writing about Isak Dinesan and later doing research on Colette. Casati and Colette patronized the same mediums and frequented a circle of louche-minded grandees; they shared a gift for malice and a penchant for exhibitionism. Dinesen seems to have styled the witchy persona of her old age––Baroness Blixen––after Casati. Claims that Dinesan and Casati almost certainly crossed paths in Paris, where Casati lived before and after WWI. They shared a taste for Oriental barbarism filtered through a gauze of ancien-regime snobbery…Mentions their similar skeletal frames. Casati spent every penny of her patrimony on palaces, parties, antiques, cars, clothes, jewels, travel, and art; by the Depression, she was $25 million in debt. "I want to be a living work of art," she proclaimed. But she tried so hard to be unique that she inevitably became a type…She was an ephemeral spectacle, neglecting thought and feeling. After the forced liquidation of her Parisian villa and its contents, she moved to London, spending her last days in a cheap bed-sit, casting spells on her enemies and compiling three volumes of a strange journal… Poor, and increasingly addled by gin and drugs, she never ceased dressing to produce a sensational effect. Claims she foretold fashion's future. She died of a cerebral hemorrhage. Article is accompanied by a Portfolio of sketches and photographs by fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld.